From its inception twenty-five years ago, one of the most eagerly awaited developments of the personal computer has been multimedia--computerized adventures portrayed in video, graphics, animation, sound, and text. For the past six years, most personal computers sold have been capable of running multimedia productions, but multimedia has been a disappointment both artistically and economically. This problem is generally attributed to the lack of a multimedia authoring system that unlocks the creative power of the author, artist, teacher, storyteller, playwrite, poet--the person who has a story to tell.
Currently, there are some 67 multimedia authoring systems on the market. They pursue a bewildering array of different solutions to the authoring problem, but they have one key feature in common and it is this feature that hamstrings the creative person: they require the author to design the project first, then create it. It is as if, prior to writing a letter on a word processor, you were required to stipulate the number of paragraphs it would have, the theme of each paragraph, the number of sentences in each and the number of words in each sentence. Only after you had done this would you be allowed to start writing.
The creative process is very different in multimedia creation than in computer programming. The weakness in multimedia authoring systems has stemmed from a failure to appreciate that difference. "Spaghetti code," where each element can connect to any other element in an ad hoc, accidental way, is the bane of good computer programming, to be rooted out and killed off by exhaustive design and rigid obedience to rules. By contrast, to the extent that it emulates life, spaghetti code is the heart of multimedia, for everything in life connects to everything else in a frequently accidental manner.
The primary reason that spaghetti code is the bane of good computer programming is the essential difficulty in keeping track of where each piece of the code fits and where each "go to" line goes. This difficulty is manageable in smaller projects, but increases exponentially as the project grows. Therefore, considerable time is spent rewriting and organizing code and software design rules are strictly followed in order to manage this complexity. Because multimedia development software has, until now, followed the conventions of computer programming, these same management problems have plagued professional multimedia developers and has made it extremely difficult for novices to produce good multimedia presentations. Multimedia developers have dealt with the management problem in a manner similar to computer programming, i.e. extensive rewriting and organizing and adherence to strict design rules. Novices, however, have been forced to limit the scope of their presentations to manageable sizes. Each of these solutions is contrary to the creative process as each limits the author's creativity, producing lifeless works.
A major deficit of current multimedia authoring systems is that they treat the media, i.e. the text, audio, video, graphics, etc., as the fundamental elements rather than the characters, scenes and dialog which make up the traditional elements of a story. Thus, the author is not only confronted with the task of writing a credible and entertaining story, but also must piece together all of the media elements which the authoring system sees as the story itself.
Another drawback of current multimedia authoring systems is the inability of the author to obtain meaningful feedback during the authoring process. Ideally, once a group of frames have been constructed, an author would like to see how the frames flow in order to make edits while the content is still fresh in her mind. Current systems require that all intervening frames and links be constructed before the project may be viewed, making it impossible for the author to obtain meaningful, real-time, feedback. Rather, the author is forced to complete intervening links, which may be edited or deleted depending upon the author's perception of the frames when they are finally viewed, and unacceptably delaying feedback.
Another drawback of current multimedia systems is the lack, or inadequacy, of a graphical outline feature. Current systems having an outline capability require that an outline be generated by the author prior to writing the actual text. As noted above, this itself is a problem. However, once the outline is complete current systems display the outline in a predetermined fashion which may, or may not, reflect the author's perception of the story. Therefore, for an author to reorganize the story, the author must completely rearrange the outline, cutting portions and rerouting links. This additional effort detracts from the author's story writing efforts and, in the end, may not produce a workable outline.
Another hindrance to the creation of vibrant multimedia presentations is the difficulty encountered by authors seeking to provide meaningful direction to performers. Directing actors in multimedia is extremely difficult as the branching nature of multimedia means that a given shot could be reached from a variety of different frames, making its context an extremely complex concept which is difficult or impossible to convey to the actors. In fact, it may be difficult even for the author to recall the context within which a statement is made. The result is statements that are voiced inappropriately or emotionless statements that sound wrong in any context, both of which destroy the sense of conversation.
Another drawback of current multimedia authoring systems is the requirement that a separate background graphic be generated or copied into each frame. Because the author is forced to think about the graphic when each frame is created, the flow of the story is broken in the author's mind whenever a new frame is generated. In addition, in current systems the author must recopy the background graphic into each frame if changes have been made to that graphic after its initial placement. This requires the author to go back and figure out which frames had included that background and to keep track of which frames have been changed to include the updated background.
Still another drawback of current multimedia authoring systems is the difficulty in producing credible speaking animation. Current systems require the use of a separate animation program to generate images, which are imported into the multimedia authoring system and matched to the audio track. This process is time consuming and requires a substantial degree of animating skill to produce credible results.
Finally, another drawback of current multimedia authoring systems is the difficulty in keeping track of the various intellectual property, i.e. copyrights and trademarks, used in the project. A multimedia project will contain hundreds, more likely thousands, of separately ownable chunks of property. Every block of text, character, audio recording, background, video clip, headset and animation set is a discretely ownable piece of property. Where the author has created every one of those elements herself or where the project will not be placed for sale, there may be little reason to keep track of who owns each piece of property in the project. However, where the project may be sold and where there are a number of creators of the various chunks of property in the project keeping track of their ownership is essential. The trouble is, of course, that tracking the ownership of dozens of things, let alone hundreds or thousands of them, is a tedious job, and one which is not addressed by current multimedia authoring systems.
The inventor knows of no multimedia authoring system that automatically keeps track of the structure and attributes of a multimedia presentation and allows a multimedia author to focus solely on the content of the presentation, that allows the author to obtain meaningful feedback at any point in the development process, that allows the author to easily arrange a meaningful graphical outline, that allows the author to provide meaningful direction to performers, which eliminates the need for an author to provide and update graphical backgrounds for each frame, which integrates animation in a manner which allows an inexperienced user to produce credible animated images, or which keeps track of the ownership of the various pieces of intellectual property used in a multimedia project.